


TR8C- emotional virus found. Quarantine?

by Thewonderfulthingaboutfish



Category: Join the Party (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Gen, Heavy Angst, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-04 22:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thewonderfulthingaboutfish/pseuds/Thewonderfulthingaboutfish
Summary: SPOILERS for end of Hunting party and beginning of House party.Almost immediately Tracey regretted what he did. Shit went down, and the look of fear and hurt on everyone's faces went right to his giant warforge heart. Everything he was promised was a lie, and this new world completely sucks.Tracey has feelings, dreams, and misses Inara.





	TR8C- emotional virus found. Quarantine?

Tracey doesn't always know where he is. In the past month of staying with the Council and the warforge Family, he's been losing track of things. Mostly stuff, but sometimes time and reality. There are times when he's surrounded by friendly warforge kin, a happy world as the council's shown him, with Family like before, (a before he can't even remember) and other friends nearby and happy, with Inara the nearest and happiest. He believes in this world so strongly that it's always a shock and disappointment when he's back in what he really knows as the real world. Instead of loving Family, the warforge around him congratulate him on his betrayal, and ignore and demean him the rest of the time. His loved ones are nowhere to be seen. He hasn't seen the Council in ages, even though he can feel the bastard in the back of his head, messing with him and his perception of everything. 

Almost immediately Tracey regretted helping the Council. Shit went down, and the look of fear and hurt on everyone's faces went right to his giant warforge heart. Everything he was promised was a lie, and this new world completely sucks. He's basically the council's abandoned pet, and hates it, when he's in the right world to feel hate. He misses Inara. 

Inara, with her tiny size and enormous heart, fiery spirit, clever and brave and loving. Inara, who he betrayed. It's his fault they're separated, and his own fault if she never forgives him and hates him forever, as he deserves. It's his fault if she's hurt at all. His fault if she's dead. 

He hasn't heard anything about her in weeks. The Family had her on the top of the hit list, but with the way he slips in and out of reality, he doesn't know if he missed something important. No one's mentioned her at all. He knows there are rebels, they talk about Brinks and Autumn and Zubi, but nothing about Inara. He's so scared they already killed her. A world, a real world, where Inara hates him is infinitely, impossibly better than one where she's dead.   
He has to believe, really believe that she's okay. That she's out there, safe and being a sneaky, giant pain in the Council's ass. Making oatcakes and giving Oatcake belly rubs. If he lets himself entertain the idea that she's gone he knows he might just stay dreaming forever. He's in the Family, but his real family, made mostly of a little sister and her dog, have to be out there, fighting to fix his enormous mistake. She's too stubborn to not be.  
Maybe she's in Fidapolis, holed up in Kiko castle and planning with Greg and Alonzo. Who also have to be alive. Maybe Tortipolis, deep underground and still crushing helplessly on representative Brinks. Or Infropolis, or Antipolis or Chronopolis, or back to the Great Green with her enormous nomad family.

He just wants to see her again. They'd been together for so long, being separate almost hurts physically. He wants to give her a high ten when one of them does something particularly awesome, and sit on the floor playing with oatcake and fall over laughing at the dog's silly faces. He wants to hold hands with her in the dark and invisible, and have her back while she has his. He wants to watch her on the Grind Machine™ and worry even though she's amazing on it, and annoy Speaker Martinson for breakfast foods at all hours of the day. Really, he wants to hug her. Inara is great to hug, small enough to completely wrap up in his arms and lift off the ground. Her head fits right underneath his own and on his shoulder, and while he's much bigger, he feels safe in her embrace. She's soft and warm and her funky earrings clink nicely against his chest. 

Tracey can’t tell if it’s his own...depression, basically, or the Council preventing him from leaving. He doesn’t want to be here anymore, that’s for certain, but he just can’t seem to get up and go. Maybe it’s because he’s scared. If he leaves the manor, he’s going to have to face the consequences of what he did to the world. If he finds Inara, he’ll have to live with her hatred. He knows he’s a coward for staying here in safety, however awful that safety is. Better than being out there, alone and a public enemy. He’s very, very bad at being alone and it does NOT make him feel great. 

He doesn’t even know how he’d leave. He barely leaves the Manor anyway, trotted out sometimes for power displays, and the occasional patrols, but he’s never left alone. He’s coming up on three weeks here, and they’ve all been terrible. It’s at least the prettiest jail cell he’s been in, and he’s been in a few. It’s even nicer than Archspire Hideaway, so the Council is really outdoing himself this time around. But Tracey can’t bring himself to appreciate it, even if he wanted to. He hates the Council so much he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wishes he had the energy to go into a rage and fuck shit up, like he’s good at, but he’s so exhausted after he comes out of dreaming that he really can’t do anything but be sad. He’s getting very good at that now, being sad. He’s made the exciting discovery that he does indeed have tear ducts, or something like them. He’ll get rusty at this rate, but he barely has the energy to wipe them away. 

He hates how little he knows about himself. He doesn’t know how sentry mode works, or where food goes when he eats it, and just how little agency he has over his own body. He deeply hates that he was made by the Council, and that he was made to be a weapon. He hates being around all these other warforge, who like being soldiers and destroying the peaceful Concentric states. 

Tracey can’t stand to be here anymore. He has to leave. When he gets the chance he will give himself a hard reboot, and maybe that will bring back some energy. He doesn’t know when he’ll leave, or where to. But he knows he has to go. He despises this place so much it’s making his gears turn backwards.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I wanted to explore how Tracey felt while he was with the Family, while Inara is out there running a rebellion. i basically gave him big ol depression. Sorry, buddy. I hope yall liked it.


End file.
